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Black Hawk down Essay

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Black Hawk Down
In October 1993 a group of Army rangers and Delta force soldiers were sent into Somalia to capture a warlord that had already caused the deaths of over 200,000 thousands civilians. They were also to help the U.N. to deliver food to the people that were starving in the city. The whole mission was called a humanitarian mission but that was not the case for the one hundred and thirteen soldiers on that day October 1993. This movie is based on actual events that happened on one day when they were sent into Mogadishu to capture two top lieutenants. Everything that could have gone wrong did. Two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and the soldiers had to fight for over eighteen hours against a whole city. This battle was the longest continuous fighting that any U.S. soldiers had fought in since the Vietnam War. Eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed and another seventy were wounded. The battle was made very public due to the fact that two delta force soldiers Gordon and Shugart bodies were drug thru the streets and it was videotaped. However Gordon and Shugart were given the Medal of Honor for their actions in protecting and saving pilot Mike Durant. Days after the battle President Clinton pulled all troops out of Somalia.
For me having been in combat and see it first hand, I believe that this movie properly showed how combat really is in are day. I have had many people ask what is combat like for you or how what is it like in Iraq. I always tell them if you just want a little taste of what it is like and what soldiers go through than go watch Black Hawk Down. Obviously it has had the Hollywood touch to it but for the most part there wasn’t much of the director Ridley Scott changing the story or adding in his political ideals. When the actors were being trained by a ranger unit before the filming of the movie, all the actors had a letter put under their doors that said “Tell our true story”. The letter was signed by all the soldiers that...